8/5/23
Newsletter #418
The Crack of Dawn
Edith was known exclusively by her first name (her last name was Thompson). She was the assistant coordinator on Xena, and she was the one who picked me (and all the directors and actors coming in from L.A.) up at the airport. Edith would give me a thick manila envelope containing the latest rewrite of the script, the show’s schedule, a bunch of other paperwork, my per diem of 700 New Zealand dollars (worth about $350 US), and once we got to know each other, an ounce of weed. Edith wore her hair in a buzz cut, which was very unique in 1995, and she was the only “out” lesbian on the crew. Edith and I became fast friends, and we spent a lot of our spare time together. Edith had a big pit bull named Kali, the Hindu goddess of war, although when she said it, everybody thought she was saying, “Collie.”
One of my earliest Crack of Dawns was about Edith. It was about how when she simultaneously got shit-canned from Xena, evicted from the house where she’d rented a room for years, and her eight-cylinder, manual transmission, Holden took a complete dump and wouldn’t run. We had lunch and she was in a perfectly calm, upbeat mood as she related all these various disasters. I offered to lend her money, but she refused. Two hours later she called and informed me that she’d won the lottery – $300,000. Edith and her gorgeous girlfriend left Auckland and moved back to her hometown of Wellington and bought a house. That was the whole newsletter, but I knew that there had to be another.
From the time Edith and I met in 1995 when Xena first began, she had a dream: she wanted to be a 1st assistant director. Not a director, not a coordinator, not a producer, a 1st AD. She was certain that she could do that job. I completely believed her, too.
Wait. I must stop my narrative flow to describe Edith’s and my first encounter. She wandered onto the set, then over to video village where I could generally be found. I digress within a digression, but I storyboarded everything I ever directed until season two of Xena. Over the course of a series of episodes, the script changes were so frequent, and so different, that they kept negating the work I had already done. So, instead of making a little drawing, I switched to Shot Sheets, which are numbered descriptions of the shots. In any case, Edith stepped up behind me at video village and said in her wonderful kiwi accent, “Are those your storyboards, mate?” I said, “Yes, would you like to look at them?” She said yes, and I handed her my 50-page graphic novel of this episode we were shooting, on yellow lined paper. She looked long and hard at my drawings, slowly turning the pages. Edith finally looked up at me and said, “So you don’t have to be able to draw to draw storyboards.” I nodded and said, “Yes.”
In 1999 (when I was partying nonstop), I shot my film, If I Had a Hammer – my one film (of nine) that hasn’t been released, but soon will be. I drew up the budget and as I was filling in the slot of 1st assistant director, which was, I think, $1,000 a week for four weeks of shooting, plus two weeks of prep, which was the least I could pay in L.A. for anybody who knew what they were doing. I then realized that if Edith was interested – really interested – I could bring her in, if she was of a mind to figure out how to stay in L.A. for six weeks and get around while she was there. She wasn’t staying with me, that was for sure — I had a 550 sq. ft. apartment.
I pitched it to Edith, and bless her wonderful soul, she ran with the idea as hard as you could run. This was her shot at being a 1st AD, and she fucking knew that she could do it. She had convinced me years earlier. And given the chance, she took it.
Edith knew every L.A. actor that had ever been on Xena in five seasons, which was a bunch, and she became friends with a lot of them. Edith immediately knew where she would stay – with her buddy, the incredibly hot actress, Hudson Leick, who played the character, Callisto, with whom I sadly never worked. Hudson lived in West Hollywood, which was not far from my place in Santa Monica.
This gives me a perfectly good reason to include a photo of a beautiful woman — Hudson Leick as Callisto.
And Hudson was completely cool with Edith staying with her for six weeks. Wait. Hudson was so ridiculously gorgeous that, as a fan, I must include another photo.
Anyway, regarding transportation, which everybody in L.A. must have, particularly a 1st AD, Edith was so logical it still boggles me somehow. She casually asked me over the phone from New Zealand, “What brand of car do you drive?” I said, “A Chrysler Le Baron. I’m from Detroit, and I like Chryslers. I’ve had several.” Edith said, “Right” (which sounded like, “Royt”), then she magically appeared in L.A. driving the same model car as me, but ten years older (she somehow got for $500). Edith was so sharp that after we finished our six weeks of work, she then drove that Le Baron all over the United States for a month, then sold it for $500.
I was just thinking, “Do I have a photo of Edith?” Yes, I do, although it’s not scanned. Edith was my date at Lucy Lawless and Rob Tapert’s wedding.
I love this newsletter. I didn’t get to the story I set out to tell. But I got through the beginning.
I have once again beaten the dawn, but by mere minutes.
Here’s something useless to think about: what the hell did Ernest Hemingway mean with The Sun Also Rises?